It Was A Long Shot
by Orange Autumn
Summary: The cracking report of the gun rang through his mind...


**It Was A Long Shot**

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_"Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain."_

_-Charlie Chaplin_

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Sam felt the awful, wrenching twist of his stomach the moment the beast appeared on silent feet, form charging head-long for his brother.

Dean was a good thirty yards away from him and the beast was moving fast. He didn't need to call out, he knew Dean saw it, but he saw it moments too late. His arm wasn't going to come up in time. It was going to nail him. There was no telling the damage it would do with those razor claws.

It was a good thing Sam's arm had raised the moment he saw it appear, the Taurus handgun nestled in his grip. Everything he thought or saw in those few seconds seemed to happen lightning fast, or maybe impossibly slow. All he knew was his desperation as he lined up the sight with the creature.

The cracking report of the gun rang through his mind, and he watched numbly as the beast wobbled, tripping up over its own feet. His brother ducked at the last second as the creature sailed over his head, full of momentum. It came crashing down a fair distance behind Dean, rolling roughly across the earthen floor before coming to a rest abruptly. It didn't move, or make a single sound.

Noises of the world around him came back in a rush. The wind in the trees, the trickle of the little stream somewhere behind him, the harshness of his panted breaths, and most ensuring of all, the loud whoop his brother let loose.

"Ho-ly_ shit_, Sam!" Dean yelled over to him, a large grin gleaming at him even from the wide space between them. His brother stood near the creature, but out of harm's reach as he checked to make sure it was dead.

Sam stayed where he was, shell-shocked.

"Ha-_haa_!" Dean ran a disbelieving hand over his face as he stared down at the hairy beast. "That was... that was so fucking sweet. You nailed him! Right in the heart, man!" Dean was making his way over now.

Sam didn't know when he lowered his gun arm, but he did somewhere in the space of Dean's exclamations. He vaguely wondered why he was standing there like an idiot, but the notion that he'd felled the creature at such a great distance, moving at the speed it was... well... it was a pretty crazy notion. Maybe he was really running toward his brother's still form right now, and this was all some insane illusion.

Dean's hardy open-palmed shoulder smack knocked that out of the ballpark. "Snap out of it, dude! You just owned that werewolf, from... from," Dean gestured wildly across the expanse of grass and trees to the dead beast. "...over here!"

Finally, Sam allowed his lips to curve into a sheepish smile. "I did, didn't I? ...Wow."

"Fuck wow! That was amazing!" Dean crowed, smacking Sam's shoulder again.

Sam couldn't help it. He started to chuckle, and then the chuckles turned into full-on laughter. Dean followed him shortly. They were both still shocked, and they both knew why. Dean had come so close to possibly losing his head, and Sam had come much too close to losing his brother.

"I'm _amazing_!" Sam cried, the relief nearly lifting him up off his feet. "And you _suck_!"

Dean smacked Sam's shoulder for the third time. "Alright, don't get a big head. It was a fluke!"

"You change your tune pretty fast, man." Sam grinned, pearly whites showing in all their genuine glory.

"Well, yeah, you said I suck! I do not suck." Dean gave a good glare, and then grabbed his brother's arm, forcing him to turn back the way the Impala was. "Now come on, we've gotta take care of that son of a bitch so we can celebrate!"

Sam laughed some more as they walked away, throwing his arm around Dean's shoulder.

Dean cast him a grin as he reached his hand up to hook on Sam's shoulder. "I'm proud of ya, little brother. Nice shot."

Sam smiled and nodded, a little embarrassed for some reason, but that didn't change the fact that the warmth of his approval swiftly overtook the lingering fear.

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Yay! This came to me randomly this morning. I really liked the idea, so I quickly wrote it down. Hope you enjoyed! I suppose the timeline would be somewhere in the middle of Season 1, or maybe before Stanford... hmmm.

-Orange Autumn


End file.
